PUNE: Sales and new project launches in the country's real estate sector are recording a dip, but analysts observe that Pune continues to see an increase in sales and prices.

The city has emerged as one of the best performers in terms of age of inventory and time taken for inventory to be sold.

Although residential markets in all major cities are still experiencing a pressure, Pune has shown promising growth. The city has replaced Delhi-NCR to occupy the third slot in absorption or sales figures. Even in the number of new launches, Pune has surged ahead of Delhi-NCR, standing third after Bengaluru and Mumbai in the first half of 2015. Real estate consultant Knight Frank released the half-yearly report on Tuesday.

The research firm has given their findings for the top eight cities — Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Kolkata. It stated that these residential markets were expected to witness a slight improvement in demand during the second half of 2015. However, this year, annual sales will fall behind that of 2014 across markets, barring Pune.

Ghulam Zia, executive director of Knight Frank, explained, "While there has been a continuous fall in the residential markets since the past 30 months, an inflexion point is seen now. Particularly, Pune has shown a steady growth and has surpassed Delhi-NCR in the number of units sold." He added that while the Delhi-NCR market has primarily been investor-driven, Pune is an end-user market. "Delhi has been affected due to developer delays and loss of faith among investors," Zia said.

Sanjay Bajaj, managing director, Jones Lang Lasalle (JLL), Pune, also observed that the city is still stable in terms of residential real-estate market. He added, "Although I am not sure that the costs would surpass big cities, it can be said that the decrease in new launches seen in the previous months would help offset the absorption rate."

In terms of office space, Pune recorded the fastest growth in rentals as compared to the top eight cities and is expected to rise further in the coming months due to shortage of supply. "This is a great time for landlords," said Shantanu Mazumder, director, Knight Frank Pune. The report also mentions that although there is a dearth of quality office spaces, vacancy has decreased.

While other cities will take three years to offload premium or high-end residential unsold inventory, Pune is expected to take only two years to do so.

In the next six months, the number of project launches and sales figures are expected to see an increase in the city.

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